St. Paul crime

The Pioneer Press has launched an online interactive map of reported crimes in St. Paul, allowing you to keep tabs on your neighborhood.

The map lets you see incidents and information for each neighborhood or the entire city, such as total crimes by type, by day of the week and location.

The map will be routinely updated about every one or two weeks, depending on when the city police department publishes new data on its website.

The map, which now has information dating to January 2010, includes certain types of crimes that resulted in a police report: homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, auto theft, arson, domestic assault, vandalism, narcotics and firearm discharges.

But there are other incidents that police respond to that are either not among the crime types included here or didn't result in a police report.

Because police don't publish exact addresses, incidents are plotted on the map based on block numbers.

In most cases, the address is missing the final digit. For example, an incident at 345 Cedar St. would be listed at 34X Cedar St.

But the addresses of certain incidents -- particularly rape -- would have two or more digits missing, such as 3XX Cedar St.

The incidents reflect crimes as they were identified by police at the time they happened. Crimes are often reclassified later. For example, an incident might start out as an assault and then be changed to a homicide if the victim dies later.

As a result of this, very few of the reported homicides in the city show up in this data. A St. Paul Police Department spokesman said all homicides are initially classified as death investigations. Those incident reports, which could also include suicides and natural deaths, are not included in the data the police department publishes.